But Mommy Will Be Mad
at Me

by Shawn Mayo

Shawn Mayo

From the Editor:
The following story appears in the nineteenth Kernel Book, I Can Feel Blue
on Monday. It begins with President
Maurer's introduction:

Shawn Mayo is President
of the National Federation of the Blind's organization of blind college students.
Her story explores her mother's conflict between belief and fear and shows
that changing what we think about blindness in the deepest levels of our souls
isn't easy. Here is what she has to say:

"But Mommy will
be mad at me," pleaded Ashley. What! I thought, astonished. All I had
asked my three-year-old sister was whether she wanted to take a walk to my
university and then to Hardee's.

When my mother went
back to work, I had told her that I could arrange my schedule to allow me to
watch my youngest sister Ashley once a week. What a wonderful opportunity it
would be for me to spend quality time with my sister and take a break from
the demands of school and daily routine. I enjoy working with children; in
fact, I am pursuing a career as a psycho-oncologist, working with children
and adolescents with cancer.

Most of the time,
when I watch Ashley, my mother brings her over to my apartment in the morning
and picks her up in the early evening. Ashley keeps me going constantly. She
is a very intelligent and curious child whose attention span is that of a typical
three-year-old--short!

Sometimes we play
with Play‑Dough, creating different animals and various objects that
Ashley thinks up. The imagination of a child is priceless. What appears to
be a lump of clay with indentations and another chunk of attached clay is at
times a horse--which in the next breath can be a tree. We also play a lot on
the computer. She loves to hear my computer "talk" with the speech
synthesizer.

"Let's go to
Disney dot com," is an all‑too‑familiar request. My computer
with speech has provided a useful tool for me to work with her on the alphabet
and the sounds of letters. Sometimes we bake cookies, and other times I read
her a story in Braille.

Having her here has
given me the opportunity to teach her about blindness. She is learning at an
early age that blind people can do the same things as sighted people but that
sometimes we do these things in a different way.

One day when Ashley
came over, she kept talking about how my sister Genesis took her to see a movie
and then to McDonald's. I did not want Ashley to think that we could not go
to places outside my apartment and yard. So I decided it would be fun to take
her to my university to see the fountain outside the library and then walk
to Hardee's, where she could get a happy meal.

"Do you want
to see where I go to school and then get a happy meal from Hardee's?"
I asked Ashley.

"Yes!"
Ashley exclaimed. I proceeded to put her shoes and coat on. Then I grabbed
my cane. We asked my roommate Sheila, who is also blind, if she wanted to come
along, and soon the three of us headed outside. When we got outside, I asked
Ashley, "Are you ready?"

"But Mommy will
be mad at me," she pleaded.

What! I thought,
astonished. All I had asked my three-year-old-sister was if she wanted to take
a walk to my university and then to Hardee's.

"What do you
mean, Mommy will be mad at you?" I asked Ashley.

"Mommy said we
can't go by the street," Ashley responded.

At first I was hurt
and could not believe that my own mother, who had always encouraged me to go
after my dreams, who knew about my travels across the country, who had driven
me to the National Federation of the Blind's training center in Minneapolis
to learn alternative techniques of blindness (including mobility) had told
my little sister such a thing! But she had.

It was one thing
for me to control my own life, but my mother could not bring herself to believe
that a blind person could care for a child away from the safety of one's own
home.

I knew my sister trusted
me. I also knew that, for the most part, she did what our mother told her to
do. But I could not let her grow up with the misconception that her sister
could not take her anywhere because she was blind. So I decided to talk to
her about the ways that I do the same things that other people do.

"How do blind
people read?" I asked.

"Braille,"
she immediately responded as if I should know that.

"You're right.
How do Sheila and I use the computer?" I went on.

"The letters
and the mouse," she replied.

"Yes, that's
true." (I had to remember I was talking to a three-year-old.) "And
it talks to me too. What is this?" I inquired while pointing to my cane.

"Your cane, Sissy,"
she answered.

Of course she knew
it was my cane. Ashley loves to go and get my cane for me whenever we go to
the laundry room, check the mail, or play outside. Often she will grab my collapsible
cane for herself and mimic my using my cane.

We talked about the
cane and how I use it as a tool to find the curb to know where the streets
are and how I use my ears to hear where the cars are. It is amazing how quickly
children can be open to learning and replacing their misconceptions.

So off we went on
our adventure. The grass on the sides of the sidewalk became water, ridden
with alligators! On our way we paused to watch a squirrel that Ashley had spotted.
Bright kid, I thought as Ashley told me how she learned at the Nature Center
that a squirrel uses its tail to protect it from the hot sun and wet rain.

We examined pine cones
and listened to the birds as we walked hand in hand to the university. I showed
Ashley where some of my classes were, and we headed over to sit by the fountain.
After splashing in the water some, we decided to go get lunch. Then, off on
another adventure, we went to find the rewards that fast food had to offer.

That evening, when
my mother came to pick Ashley up, Ashley was excitedly relaying all the fun
things that she had done that day. I asked my mother why she had told Ashley
that she could not go on walks with me.

"It's dangerous,"
was all my mother would say.

It's because I'm blind,
I told her. And, even though she denied it, we both knew that that was the
underlying reasoning behind her belief. Mom had thought that, because I am
blind, I would not be able to keep Ashley safe.

As I thought about
it, I understood my mother's worry. Like all of us (blind and sighted alike)
she has absorbed society's beliefs about blindness. At one level Mother knew
that (because of the very training she herself helped me to get) the chances
of Ashley's getting hurt while in my care were really no greater than if I
were sighted. But she was still afraid. It will take time for all of us to
come to a different understanding of blindness.

"Let's go for
a walk, Sissy," Ashley often says. Perhaps we have to grow up with it.